MARGARET HILLENGAS
This is a one story building on Lake Street in a Chicago suburb which is part of the Bridgestone Firestone chain. The walls are concrete blocks coated in stucco and paint, punctuated by large window bays which support smaller swiveling windows. Five garage doors open up the east wall, with one larger garage door on the south. The roof is mostly flat, but arcs upward over the center of the shop floor. There is one entrance located on the protrusion and another on the west wall, off the alley.
The interior has two zones, the smaller wing for customer service and the larger main body for the vehicle repair work. This partition is maintained between the east and west walls by a series of i-beams resulting in a strip of space in the shop which is used for storage. Large steel trusses supporting the dome run north-south and support smaller wooden ones which run east-west.
This knolled kit-of-parts displays HVAC, a roof vent, cables, garage door, iron bars, i-beams, wood trusses, shingles, glass panes, concrete blocks, doors, and slabs of polished concrete flooring, tile, asphalt, plaster, and acoustic ceiling tile.
The construction focused ANT map looks at the manufacturing and use of construction equipment through the lens of life-cycles. Prevalent are topics concerning politics, economics, and the environment. Politically, construction and resource extraction, take land and labor -- construction companies are also frequently invested in military contracting. Economically, the life-cycle of construction equipment is in some respects a numbers game, with it being crucial that a machine is used up until its maintenance cost has met its value, and not a cent over. Environmentally, resource extraction and construction are hugely damaging industries, and produce products like demolition waste which is incinerated or goes to landfills.
The car focused ANT map explores the connections between various elements of a typical car and how they can or are being made more sustainable. Electric vehicles or hydrogen gas seem to be a popular bet, but the production of hydrogen, and the disposal of batteries still pose problems. Repairability also plays an important role in how long one may use their vehicle, and companies like Tesla all want to monopolize repairs on their own products, potentially limiting their usable lifespan.
The car focused ANT map explores the connections between various elements of a typical car and how they can or are being made more sustainable. Electric vehicles or hydrogen gas seem to be a popular bet, but the production of hydrogen, and the disposal of batteries still pose problems. Repairability also plays an important role in how long one may use their vehicle, and companies like Tesla all want to monopolize repairs on their own products, potentially limiting their usable lifespan.
The reimagined building incorporates construction and car items with a stuffed assembly and a stepped organization. Each box or rack is stuffed with electric batteries, which are in turn stuffed into the building. The boxes and racks differ in size, denoted by color, and create stepping movement in the circulation and plan, but also in elevation as they step up and down in tiers; an effect aided by the sunken floor.
The wall with the bay of five garage doors is one of the main entry points, the larger garage door allows deliveries or pickups of hydrogen tanks and extra batteries. The lower level provides additional storage, and batteries or racks may be lifted in and out with the assistance of cranes. Along the north wall there are a series of charging boxes inspired by rolling stack shelving in libraries.
In the north-facing view the hydrogen/electric pumps are covered by a gently stepping green awning, angling toward, but not connected to the main building. Inside racks are pushed against the walls and placed on top of eachother, stuffing the space from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling. The verticality of the arrangement creates a series of stepped pyramidal shapes which characterize most of the space. The lower level provides not only more interior volume to fill, but also terraces or stepps the building itself.
The interior space provides few clear lines of sight, with paths of circulation that must step around and in between the islands created by the batteries. The tallest of these islands is in the center of the lower level and acts as a hub which points of interaction extend from. The upper level loosely mirrors the path of circulation in the lower level, but also navigates around zones of relatively high bidirectional movement found in the loading zones, the cranes, and the rolling stack shelving.